marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> Whoa dude. That is some heavy-duty 'reality theory' speak ;)
Yes indeedy. But my point is that qualia are an ontological category,
not an epistemological one. This is crucial, because it entails that we
can't *know* qualia, we can only instantiate them - *be* them. What we
know - epistemology - is possible only in terms of the ontological
categories that instantiate information, and qualia are examples of
these categories that we personally instantiate, and in terms of which
we 'know' seeing, tasting, touching, and all the rest. Consequently we
cannot communicate such categories directly, but we can invite others
to instantiate them - by communicating the necessary information - and
consequently achieve commensurable dialogue by indicating the relevant
parts of our personal instantiations.
This implies that there are ontological categories, in the equivalent
sense, for all orders of being, in terms of which their informational
structure is expressed. This has great significance for 'yes doctor',
zombies, and other thought experiments (and actual ones) when conducted
in a manner that (may) attempt to analyse the informational structure
of reality (epistemology) without considering its instantiation
(ontology). If your mathematical conjectures re qualia are correct,
they will have to show precisely how such 'internal models of
mathematics' provide an *instantiation* (substrate) in terms of which
information can then - and only then - be expressed.
> One point. I wouldn't say that 'the Arithmetical plentitude' has 'zero
> information'. There is Shannon information there - I'd say it's a sea
> of Shannon information. Of course strings of random gibbrish are
> Shannon information.
Yes, of course. But my point (like Russell's in his book) is that the
totality adds up to zero information in a looser (but extremely
significant) sense because, like in the Library of Babel, there is no
'external' crib to tell you what's what. Only the self-selecting view
from inside delineates what's useful from what's garbage.
David
> David Nyman wrote:
>
> >
> > I agree that qualia are ontological, rather than epistemological. I
> > 'experience blue' in virtue of 'being blue' - i.e. myself-as-perceiver,
> > in specific self-relation with myself-as-percept = being blue (or
> > rather, blue in parts). This qualitative ontological base is the given
> > that differentiates into every epistemological category by internal
> > self-contrast - this is blue, that is red, sour, disgusting, verbal,
> > mathematical, sexy, whatever. Hence this ontological base cannot itself
> > be - for example - the physics, because the physics, like all
> > relationally expressed and acquired information, is part of
> > epistemology.
> >
> > If one's ontology is grounded in Arithmetical Realism (e.g. the UD
> > arithemetically instantiating the infinities of programs generated by
> > infinities of infinite bitstrings) it then follows that qualia must
> > indeed be 'internal models of mathematics'. The Arithmetical plenitude
> > of 'zero-information' self-isolates into islands of non-zero 1st-person
> > information through anthropic and counter-factual self-selection. The
> > Library of Babel generates readers to peruse itself. We must therefore
> > accept that the sense in which we wish this ontological base to be
> > considered real must be granted to be the same sense, mutatis mutandis
> > - i.e. the self-isolation of self-aware 1st-persons from the plenitude
> > - in which we ourselves wish to be considered real.
> >
> > David
> >
>
> Whoa dude. That is some heavy-duty 'reality theory' speak ;)
>
> One point. I wouldn't say that 'the Arithmetical plentitude' has 'zero
> information'. There is Shannon information there - I'd say it's a sea
> of Shannon information. Of course strings of random gibbrish are
> Shannon information.
>
> We should perhaps distinguish between several different kinds of
> information. I agree that the 'plentitude' , to quote you, does
> 'self-isolate into islands of non-zero 1st person information'. This
> kind of information could be 'logical depth' type complexity (or
> roughly 'knowledge').
>
> So I think integrated patches of Knowledge-Information (logical-depth
> complexity) are the 'islands' in the 'sea' of raw Information (Shannon
> or statistical type complexity). And I think there's a third kind of
> information associated with Qualia which isn't understood yet.
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Received on Thu Sep 21 2006 - 13:32:50 PDT